The Dying Alderman

I marvel that a brilliant man like Jacques Barzun would include this in a collection of fifty classics. While it does have some -- shall we say? -- sociological interest, and it does end very strong, it is a classic instance of "For the first thirty pages you wonder whether it will ever start, and from then on you wnder whether it will ever end." Incidentally, the gimmick of three suspects with similar names is used again with great cleverness in Warner Shedd's WILDCAT AT EVE. Another thought of much less consequence: this volume, like many others in the Barzun & Taylor reprint series is blighted by multiple typographical errors. I don't think Barzun would have put-up with that kind of sloppiness in his own students!

Many of these Penguins I read blind; I choose them at random from the shelf, with only the cover of the spine to give a clue as to what they will be about. The earliest ones carry no blurb, and no information about the author. And so I read this wondering: who was Henry Wade? I felt certain he must have been a detective, moonlighting as a mystery writer. He seemed to have a deep and thorough understanding of police procedure, and intimate knowledge of the thought processes of someone overwhelmed by information, struggling to distinguish signal from noise, stumbling towards a conclusion. Perhaps he showed an unusual level of interest in the workings of committees and Town Councils - a Town Councillor seemed another possibility. But how show more intriguing to find that he was actually a Peer, Sir Henry Lancelot Aubrey-Fletcher, 6th Baronet. Continued show less

A fine mystery of the "classical" phase. POSSIBLE SPOILER COMING: Three investigators (all official: Superintendent, Chief Constable, and Scotland Yard inspector), who do not fully trust or even respect each other, take different approaches to solving the murder of an unpleasant fellow. All are partly right and, of course, inescapably, ultimately wrong.